This morning I'm off to Cardiff where today we'll be observing Holocaust Memorial Day. Each year we remember not just the Jewish victims of the Holocaust but the others too: the gypsies, the gays, the physically and mentally handicapped, the Jehovah's Witnesses, together with other tragedies, like Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

For me some of the most moving moments have come from people who had no personal connection with the Holocaust at all, but who learned from it how important it is to fight hate in the name of our common humanity. Yesterday for example I was at a school in London where over 70 per cent of the pupils are either Hindu or Muslim. They took the ceremony. Many were children of parents who came to Britain seeking asylum. And I can only say they gave me inspiration and hope. We sometimes forget how two million people died in the violence between Hindus and Muslims in 1947 during the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Even today we think about the ongoing tragedy of Darfur and the many other conflict zones throughout the world. So the need to remember where hate can lead is still vital. Memory is to the mind what the immune system is to the body. It creates defences. It mobilises protection against the viruses of fear and violence. What we forget we can repeat. What we remember we can guard against.

This year's theme is that one person can make a difference. And they really can. I think of Raoul Wallenberg the Swedish diplomat who saved so many lives in Budapest in the last months of the war; or Nicholas Winton, who organised kindertransport, bringing ten thousand children to safety in Britain, and so many others. The most extraordinary thing about the people who made a difference is that, almost without exception, they didn't think they were doing anything extraordinary. They were just doing what they thought a human being should do.

And in that context I think of a beloved friend about whom Richard Harries spoke so movingly yesterday, the late Dr Zaki Badawi, who understood so well how the fight for tolerance always has new battlegrounds, and who so beautifully epitomised the dignified and gracious face of Islam. The truth is that every time any one of us reaches out a hand of friendship to one who is not like us, we make a difference.

And the sum of all those differences is the difference between a world of hate and one of humanity.

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